It is common practice to connect individual wires to terminals in an electrical connector by means of an insertion apparatus of the type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,758,935 which has a connector locating jig for locating the connector in a predetermined position, a wire locating jig for locating the wires with their axes extending transversely of the cavities in the connector, and an insertion means for pushing the wires laterally of their axes into the cavities in the connector and into the wire receiving slots of the terminals in the cavities. The principles of the mass insertion apparatus, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,758,935, have been used in cable making machines as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,043,034 and 4,235,015 and the same principles have been used in harness making apparatus of the general type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,194,276. It is advantageous to connect wires to terminals in a connector with a mass insertion apparatus for the reason that all of the wires are connected to all of the terminals in the connector in a single wire insertion operation which can be carried out by simply moving an insertion tool towards the wires and the connector.
The U.S. Patents noted above show wire insertion apparatus which can be used only with the discrete wires rather than wires in a flat cable. The discrete wires are simply placed in a wire jig or otherwise positioned in alignment with the connector cavities and thereafter pushed into the cavities. The operation of positioning the wires relative to the connector may be carried out manually, by robotics, or by feeding the wires to an insertion station as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,043,034 and 4,235,015.
Flat cable, rather than discrete wires, is being used to an increasing extent in the manufacture of electrical harnesses and harness sub-assemblies and heretofor, it has not been practical to use mass insertion techniques to insert the wires in a flat cable into terminals in a connector. A common type of flat cable comprises individual wires which are bonded to each other in side-by-side parallel coplanar relationship. Such cable may be produced either by extruding cable in its completed form or by bonding individual wires to each other. In either event, the wires in the cable must be separated from each other before they can be connected to terminals in a connector with the mass wire insertion techniques discussed above. The task of separating cable wires is burdensome and time-consuming and negates, to some extent, the advantages of using cable in harness manufacturing operations.
The present invention is directed generally to the achievement of methods and apparatus for connecting wires in a flat cable to terminals in a connector by the known mass insertion techniques and particularly, to methods and apparatus which avoid the necessity of preparing the cable in advance for the wire connecting operations.
The invention is thus directed to the achievement of a mass wire insertion apparatus for inserting a plurality of n wires into the wire receiving cavities of an electrical connector or the like, the cavities being in side-by-side relationship in a row. The apparatus is of the general type comprising a connector jig for holding the connector in a predetermined positioning and a wire locating jig proximate to the connector jig for locating the wires in side-by-side spaced-apart parallel relationship with each wire extending transversely of, and being in alignment with, one of the cavities. The invention is concerned with apparatus which is intended for use with wires in a flat cable, the wires being in side-by-side coplanar relationship with the center-to-center spacing of adjacent wires being less than the center-to-center spacing of adjacent cavities in the connector. An apparatus in accordance with the invention is particularly characterized in that the wire locating jig comprising a plurality of at least n-1 cable spreading and wire locating fingers, the fingers being in side-by-side relationship in a stack with the axes of the fingers extending transversely of the axes of the wires in a cable when the cable is located proximate to a connector in the connnector jig with the cable axis extending transversely of the row of cavities in the connector. The fingers have convergently tapered free ends which are proximate to the cable and adjacent fingers in the stack have opposed cable spreading side surfaces which extend from the free ends of the fingers. The fingers and the cable are movable relatively towards each other so that the free ends of the fingers initially move between adjacent wires in the cable and thereafter, the side surfaces of the fingers spread the wires of the cable until the center-to-center spacing of adjacent wires in the cable is the same as the center-to-center spacing of adjacent cavities in the connector and the wires are in alignment with the cavities.
In accordance with a further embodiment, the fingers are normally in a packed condition in which the opposed side surfaces of adjacent fingers are substantially against each other and the center-to-center spacing between the free ends of adjacent fingers is equal to the center-to-center spacing of adjacent wires in the cable. The fingers are movable from the packed condition to a spread condition in which the opposed side surfaces of adjacent fingers are spaced apart by a distance equal to the diameters of the wires in the cable, the thickness of an individual finger plus the diameter of an individual wire being equal to the center-to-center spacing of adjacent cavities in the connector. The fingers are movable from the packed condition to the spread condition upon relative movement of each finger between adjacent wires in the cable whereby the wires are spread apart.
In accordance with a further embodiment, the fingers in the stack are in spaced-apart and fixed relationship to each other and the central pair of adjacent fingers in the middle of the stack have their free ends closest to the cable. The pair of corresponding fingers on each side of the central pair have their free ends spaced from the cable by a distance which is slightly greater than that of the central fingers and successive pairs located at increasing distance from the central pair have their free ends located at increasing distances from the cable. Upon relative movement of the fingers towards the cable, the central pair of fingers straddle a central wire in the cable and spread cable laterally from the central wire. As successive pairs of corresponding fingers move against and partially through the cables, the wires on each side of the central wire are separated from the cable and spread.
In accordance with a further embodiment, the individual wires in a cable are spread apart by a method in which spreading fingers are moved against a cable located proximate to a connector and as the free ends of the fingers move through the cable, the wires in the cable are spread apart by the wedging action of the fingers.